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Colorado Ice look for first-round playoff upset at Tri-Cities

Coach says team needs to show more mental strength

By Sean Star Sports Writer

Posted:
06/21/2012 10:32:47 PM MDT

Heron O'Neal knows what it takes to win championships. And just in case his Colorado Ice players forgot, he wore a T-shirt commemorating the three titles he won as head coach of the Billings Outlaws to practice earlier this week.

A key aspect of the teams represented on that shirt, O'Neal said, was their ability to battle through adversity -- a trait that this Ice team doesn't always possess. Such an inability to answer the bell, as O'Neal described it, has left the coach wondering what kind of effort he'll get tonight when Colorado (8-6) plays at Tri-Cities (12-2) in the first round of the Indoor Football League playoffs.

"That's how we won championships in Billings, high football IQ, facing adversity well, and we weren't mentally weak," O'Neal said. "Right now we are. We are mentally weak."

Being properly prepared by the coaching staff isn't the problem, O'Neal said. It's failing to put in the extra effort that is required to succeed at this time of year that has been the issue.

"The thing it comes down to is we have a very immature football team that doesn't understand you have to watch film on your own some," O'Neal said. "You have to be accountable for everything that you do. Everything that you do out here, you're getting judged on -- just like coaches are judged on wins and losses. That's what it comes down to. We're just very immature with taking care of business right now."

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Tonight's matchup is a familiar one, as the teams met in the postseason last year, with the Fever emerging with a 45-42 victory at the Budweiser Events Center. Only a handful of Ice remain from that bitter loss, but with Tri-Cities again edging out Colorado in overtime three weeks ago at the BEC, 52-49, there will be no shortage of vengeance on the Colorado sideline.

"We took a bad loss, so we should have a chip on our shoulder," said defensive end Antoine Carter, whose team received the fourth and final postseason seed in the Intense Conference after losing a strength-of-schedule tiebreaker with Wichita. "We're trying to get somewhere. They're in our way, so we just have to focus one game at a time."

Tri-Cities, which was three games better than anyone else in the Intense Conference during the regular season and wrapped up the conference's No. 1 seed a month ago, boasts a significant home-field advantage, having lost just once at the Toyota Center in two years.

Ice quarterback Jeremy Sanders said road games always pose an extra set of hurdles, which makes eliminating the mistakes that have plagued the team all season that much more difficult.

"I don't want to make any excuses, but I believe it has a lot to do with how we rest before the game during the (road) trips, really the day before the game how we prepare ourselves, as far as physically, what we eat, how much sleep we get," said Sanders, who helped his team get in the playoffs by leading it to three straight dominant victories after taking over the starting role midway through the season. "You're constantly cutting and every play going full speed, so you're getting more plays in than a normal football field. So you got to have your body and your mind right, as far as what you eat and how you take care of yourself."

Because playoff seeding wasn't decided until the end of the final week of the regular season, the Ice had to make some last-minute travel plans. With a limited number of seats available on flights to Kennewick, Wash., half the team traveled Wednesday while the other half arrived Thursday. Certainly not an ideal situation, it's just one more thing the team will have to overcome.

"I'm not going to say that it's going to be easy," Sanders said. "We just have to deal with it beforehand, and be prepared. We have to know how much rest you need, or how much you need to stretch. I believe that's the biggest case when we play out of town on long trips."

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